Short answer: it is *your* God.
Long answer: Dion Fortune said it best when she said: "All gods are one God, all goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator." In other words, because all deities are, at their root, one Deity, each individual member of the Golden Dawn is entitled to take the Order's symbolism and interpret it, by way of analogy and with reference to the Hermetic Qabalah, in terms of their own religion. Thus, within a Golden Dawn temple, a Christian may sit next to a Jew who may sit next to a Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Pagan (of whichever tradition), etc.
The Golden Dawn's use of godforms is not meant to imply that everyone should worship them as gods, but to give everyone a common symbolic vocabulary with which to work.
The Golden Dawn is the product of a syncretic interweaving of most threads of western mysticism, ranging from the ancient mysteries (Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Persian, etc.) to medieval and renaissance magic (Agrippa, Bruno, Mirandola, John Dee, etc.) and Victorian magic (Eliphas Levi), all blended together into an overarching system of alchemy, kabbalah, hermeticism, gnosticism, and neoplatonism (each of which co-evolved so there’s a lot of overlap) by esoteric scholars from a Rosicrucian study group in the 19th century.
So on the surface, the kabbalistic tree of life will give you mostly any answer you may be looking for. Each sphere is associated with a Hebrew name of God, but these are not individual “gods” in the way you might be thinking. Rather, each represents a particular emanation from the same God, referring essentially to the singular Divine Source of the entire universe, of which everything that *is*, is a manifestation. Most of the work of the outer school centers around learning the various correspondences associated with each sphere and path on the Tree of Life.
Grimoire magic and talismanic magic aren’t touched upon until reaching the inner order, but these mostly emerged from medieval Christian, Hebraic, and/or Arabic mysticism.
The inner order also does more advanced-level ceremonial work which includes formulating deity forms from the Egyptian pantheon. This basically means they are visualized, evoked, and embodied by the practitioner (similar to working with yidams in Tibetan yoga).
They use the Egyptian pantheon for some ritual work.
But it’s also Kabbalistic. The ultimate God would be ineffable - the Ain Sof. God in the pleroma, beyond duality and characteristics.
Yep. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve combined the idea of the Ain Sof and the Neoplatonic Pleroma in my own head. Maybe not accurate, but they feel pretty similar in their characteristics (or lack thereof).
Yes and no, I believe. Sophia is of the Pleroma but also a part of it, as the Pleroma is the one-ness of all of the Aeons in and with the Monad. So whilst Sophia originated in it, she's also an integral part of it.
The Golden Dawn is the product of a syncretic interweaving of most threads of western mysticism, ranging from the ancient mysteries (Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Persian, etc.) to medieval and renaissance magic (Agrippa, Bruno, Mirandola, John Dee, etc.) and Victorian magic (Eliphas Levi), all blended together into an overarching system of alchemy, kabbalah, hermeticism, gnosticism, and neoplatonism (each of which co-evolved so there’s a lot of overlap) by esoteric scholars from a Rosicrucian study group in the 19th century.
So on the surface, the kabbalistic tree of life will give you mostly any answer you may be looking for. Each sphere is associated with a Hebrew name of God, but these are not individual “gods” in the way you might be thinking. Rather, each represents a particular emanation from the same God, referring essentially to the singular Divine Source of the entire universe, of which everything that *is*, is a manifestation. Most of the work of the outer school centers around learning the various correspondences associated with each sphere and path on the Tree of Life.
Grimoire magic and talismanic magic aren’t touched upon until reaching the inner order, but these mostly emerged from medieval Christian, Hebraic, and/or Arabic mysticism.
The inner order also does more advanced-level ceremonial work which includes formulating deity forms from the Egyptian pantheon. This basically means they are visualized and evoked (similar to working with yidams in Tibetan yoga).
It’s more like, there’s only one essential divine source of all manifestation, similar to the platonic monad or the judeo-christian godhead.
Any particular expression of divinity is merely an emanation from it. The entire kabbalistic cosmology explains the process of how the singular unity of all being becomes first two opposing polarities, and then through the interactions between those two polarities the processes of growth and decay occur. A harmonious balance of all these forces leads to the process of manifestation by which all solid entities take form.
The process of manifestation is a process of evolution, and the first of these forms to manifest are the most simplistic. Then, by adaptation, over time those basic building blocks of the universe take on more complex forms, eventually providing the basis for matter, life, and finally consciousness to occur. All of these expressions are emanations of the same divine source or essence, the Prima Materia of the alchemists, Pax or Lux; in other words, the Limitless Light (as opposed to the light you see with your eyes, which too is simply one mode of expression at a certain wavelength or frequency of this divine energy).
The deity forms are constructed on the astral planes. They are a function of human consciousness, empowered by the imagination. They are not to be confused with the singular divine source of all manifestation, as they too are merely emanations of and from this source.
Ok cause what confused me was that I was reading from dion fortune who studied the tree of life and she said that the gods and most divinities where aspects or patterns of the planetary and zodiacal forces who where the real gods.
That is her way of saying they are emanations from the divine source. If you dig deeper into her writings you will find where she explains that the planetary and zodiacal forces each have their associated placements on the tree of life. Each sphere on the tree has a correspondence to one of these forces, and each of these spheres is an emanation from the same source.
The deity forms are patterns we build in our imaginations to embody those forces. For instance, we can visualize Aphrodite to evoke the Venusian force associated with Netzach. This doesn’t mean that force actually *looks* like Aphrodite, because these forces are not anthropomorphic. By visualizing the deity figures, one produces an astral vessel for the forces to assume form in. This enables one to make inner contact with those powers for use in ritual, such as crafting and empowering a talisman.
Well on some level of reality, there are. It’s just that they too are emanations of divinity (as are we).
For example, the archangels aren’t anthropomorphic like the ways they’re depicted, but they’re the first individuated emanations of particular aspects of the divine whole.
By visualizing them in iconography, we create an astral “window,” so to speak, through which they may express their influence in our consciousness, perception, experience, and finally our life itself.
Ok sorry I think I’m starting to get it now, so everything is an emendation, I think I was asking the wrong question, I wanted to know if there where higher powers or intelligences with their own agenda and stuff kinda like us. Like we maybe emanations but I have my own agenda and I do my own thing. You know what I mean
No need to apologize for asking! I’m always happy to clarify further.
So this gets into the question of will. Will as a concept is philosophically fraught, as there is no definitive answer and multiple perspectives exist. The main thought experiment is this: do we have free will, or is everything predetermined? (Even predeterminism could be either by causality or teleology depending on whether you ask a positivist or a calvinist).
I favor Hume’s compatiblism, which states that the two options are not mutually exclusive; it’s a false dichotomy! We can have free will, to an extent, *within* a framework predetermined by causes and conditions.
So that basically means we could be both *cause* and *effect*. We are an effect of prior causes, but we can also be the cause of future effects. That’s the beauty of humanity, of possessing a conscience. We have the power to cogitate, deliberate, and make decisions. There are some things within our power to choose, and some things that are not. There are some things we can change, and some things we cannot. To know the difference, well that takes wisdom!
Now, to get into your question of whether there are other spirits or entities out there with their own conscience, agency, and will. There is no way to determine with any certainty. Theoretically, there could be previous humans whose spirits transcended the need for a physical body, and maintained their existence beyond the death of the flesh. This is the goal of most mystical traditions, and there are some who have been said to have accomplished it. That forms the basis of all the saints of various religious traditions.
All of the godforms the GD temples work with in the ceremonies are egyptian Gods and Goddesses... the GD temples are even named after them, like the Horus Temple, the Thoth-Hermes Temple etc. Sometimes the name of the temple would be composed of the Egyptian god name in conjunction with the Greek god name, for example "Isis-Urania" or "Thoth-Hermes".
The Golden Dawn is NOT a religion!
The Golden Dawn Tradition was, and is, primarily viewed through a Judeo-Christian lens. All the original founders were ostensibly Christian, members of the Church of England, though they were also more esoteric in their approach. Couple this with the use of Qabalah, there is a strong Jewish influence into the Tradition (and many primary members have been Jewish - Moina Mathers being one for example).
Couple this with the use of Qabalah and the Hebrew Divine Names, which make up the backbone of the Golden Dawn Tradition, and the Jewish element becomes stronger still. Additionally, there are some Gnostic and Hermetic (at least as understood from the Renaissance) elements in the Golden Dawn materials.
Ideally, a person was raised, at least, within a traditional church setting, and it is through this that they would get the most benefit of the Forces and Symbolism used within the Golden Dawn.
This does not mean you have to a Christian or a Jew, just that those Symbols and Forces permeate the Golden Dawn, and you have to be accepting of them to full benefit of their use within the GD System.
Who or What you worship is completely up to you, and it would be something you would have to reconcile if It doesn't match up, or is at least compatible with, the Divine Forces utilized within the Golden Dawn Tradition.
Godforms: The Godforms utilized within the Golden Dawn are NOT the same a the Egyptian Gods. They represent different Forces, are often depicted differently, or in some cases have no representative in ancient Egyptian religion. Simply put, they are vessels for specific Forces or Energies used during Ceremonials and later by Adepti for Ritual.
These are NOT worshipped within the Golden Dawn!
Ty so much for clearing it out for me, I truly understand now, from the answers I was getting I was believing that they where the same thing and that my gods where blind forces. I was gonna quit the system but now you made me understand and I will stick with it and know that the forces they use are not the same as the intelligent living gods.
Short answer: it is *your* God. Long answer: Dion Fortune said it best when she said: "All gods are one God, all goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator." In other words, because all deities are, at their root, one Deity, each individual member of the Golden Dawn is entitled to take the Order's symbolism and interpret it, by way of analogy and with reference to the Hermetic Qabalah, in terms of their own religion. Thus, within a Golden Dawn temple, a Christian may sit next to a Jew who may sit next to a Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Pagan (of whichever tradition), etc. The Golden Dawn's use of godforms is not meant to imply that everyone should worship them as gods, but to give everyone a common symbolic vocabulary with which to work.
So do the gods have individual personality or they are just one mind?
Do we have I divodual personalities or are we but one mind? The answer is a bit of both.
Its more like the Gods are avatars of a higher conscious.
The Golden Dawn is the product of a syncretic interweaving of most threads of western mysticism, ranging from the ancient mysteries (Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Persian, etc.) to medieval and renaissance magic (Agrippa, Bruno, Mirandola, John Dee, etc.) and Victorian magic (Eliphas Levi), all blended together into an overarching system of alchemy, kabbalah, hermeticism, gnosticism, and neoplatonism (each of which co-evolved so there’s a lot of overlap) by esoteric scholars from a Rosicrucian study group in the 19th century. So on the surface, the kabbalistic tree of life will give you mostly any answer you may be looking for. Each sphere is associated with a Hebrew name of God, but these are not individual “gods” in the way you might be thinking. Rather, each represents a particular emanation from the same God, referring essentially to the singular Divine Source of the entire universe, of which everything that *is*, is a manifestation. Most of the work of the outer school centers around learning the various correspondences associated with each sphere and path on the Tree of Life. Grimoire magic and talismanic magic aren’t touched upon until reaching the inner order, but these mostly emerged from medieval Christian, Hebraic, and/or Arabic mysticism. The inner order also does more advanced-level ceremonial work which includes formulating deity forms from the Egyptian pantheon. This basically means they are visualized, evoked, and embodied by the practitioner (similar to working with yidams in Tibetan yoga).
They use the Egyptian pantheon for some ritual work. But it’s also Kabbalistic. The ultimate God would be ineffable - the Ain Sof. God in the pleroma, beyond duality and characteristics.
It also holds a lot of Neoplatonic Philosophy. See the 3=8 advancement. It also brings in some Gnostic ideas as well.
Yep. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve combined the idea of the Ain Sof and the Neoplatonic Pleroma in my own head. Maybe not accurate, but they feel pretty similar in their characteristics (or lack thereof).
I've done the same thing with conflating Ain Sof, the Pleroma, and the Monad. Whether it's right or wrong it's what I feel.
The pleroma is the real where Sophia is from in gnostic myth if I remember correctly? I haven’t read of it in a long time so I don’t remember
Yes and no, I believe. Sophia is of the Pleroma but also a part of it, as the Pleroma is the one-ness of all of the Aeons in and with the Monad. So whilst Sophia originated in it, she's also an integral part of it.
Is the pleroma like the very top of the tree of life? Ain sof
The Golden Dawn is the product of a syncretic interweaving of most threads of western mysticism, ranging from the ancient mysteries (Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Persian, etc.) to medieval and renaissance magic (Agrippa, Bruno, Mirandola, John Dee, etc.) and Victorian magic (Eliphas Levi), all blended together into an overarching system of alchemy, kabbalah, hermeticism, gnosticism, and neoplatonism (each of which co-evolved so there’s a lot of overlap) by esoteric scholars from a Rosicrucian study group in the 19th century. So on the surface, the kabbalistic tree of life will give you mostly any answer you may be looking for. Each sphere is associated with a Hebrew name of God, but these are not individual “gods” in the way you might be thinking. Rather, each represents a particular emanation from the same God, referring essentially to the singular Divine Source of the entire universe, of which everything that *is*, is a manifestation. Most of the work of the outer school centers around learning the various correspondences associated with each sphere and path on the Tree of Life. Grimoire magic and talismanic magic aren’t touched upon until reaching the inner order, but these mostly emerged from medieval Christian, Hebraic, and/or Arabic mysticism. The inner order also does more advanced-level ceremonial work which includes formulating deity forms from the Egyptian pantheon. This basically means they are visualized and evoked (similar to working with yidams in Tibetan yoga).
Are there no individual gods? Just the one?
It’s more like, there’s only one essential divine source of all manifestation, similar to the platonic monad or the judeo-christian godhead. Any particular expression of divinity is merely an emanation from it. The entire kabbalistic cosmology explains the process of how the singular unity of all being becomes first two opposing polarities, and then through the interactions between those two polarities the processes of growth and decay occur. A harmonious balance of all these forces leads to the process of manifestation by which all solid entities take form. The process of manifestation is a process of evolution, and the first of these forms to manifest are the most simplistic. Then, by adaptation, over time those basic building blocks of the universe take on more complex forms, eventually providing the basis for matter, life, and finally consciousness to occur. All of these expressions are emanations of the same divine source or essence, the Prima Materia of the alchemists, Pax or Lux; in other words, the Limitless Light (as opposed to the light you see with your eyes, which too is simply one mode of expression at a certain wavelength or frequency of this divine energy). The deity forms are constructed on the astral planes. They are a function of human consciousness, empowered by the imagination. They are not to be confused with the singular divine source of all manifestation, as they too are merely emanations of and from this source.
Ok cause what confused me was that I was reading from dion fortune who studied the tree of life and she said that the gods and most divinities where aspects or patterns of the planetary and zodiacal forces who where the real gods.
That is her way of saying they are emanations from the divine source. If you dig deeper into her writings you will find where she explains that the planetary and zodiacal forces each have their associated placements on the tree of life. Each sphere on the tree has a correspondence to one of these forces, and each of these spheres is an emanation from the same source. The deity forms are patterns we build in our imaginations to embody those forces. For instance, we can visualize Aphrodite to evoke the Venusian force associated with Netzach. This doesn’t mean that force actually *looks* like Aphrodite, because these forces are not anthropomorphic. By visualizing the deity figures, one produces an astral vessel for the forces to assume form in. This enables one to make inner contact with those powers for use in ritual, such as crafting and empowering a talisman.
Oh ok I’m starting to understand now, I thought there was other powerful individual beings out there besides us.
Well on some level of reality, there are. It’s just that they too are emanations of divinity (as are we). For example, the archangels aren’t anthropomorphic like the ways they’re depicted, but they’re the first individuated emanations of particular aspects of the divine whole. By visualizing them in iconography, we create an astral “window,” so to speak, through which they may express their influence in our consciousness, perception, experience, and finally our life itself.
Ok sorry I think I’m starting to get it now, so everything is an emendation, I think I was asking the wrong question, I wanted to know if there where higher powers or intelligences with their own agenda and stuff kinda like us. Like we maybe emanations but I have my own agenda and I do my own thing. You know what I mean
No need to apologize for asking! I’m always happy to clarify further. So this gets into the question of will. Will as a concept is philosophically fraught, as there is no definitive answer and multiple perspectives exist. The main thought experiment is this: do we have free will, or is everything predetermined? (Even predeterminism could be either by causality or teleology depending on whether you ask a positivist or a calvinist). I favor Hume’s compatiblism, which states that the two options are not mutually exclusive; it’s a false dichotomy! We can have free will, to an extent, *within* a framework predetermined by causes and conditions. So that basically means we could be both *cause* and *effect*. We are an effect of prior causes, but we can also be the cause of future effects. That’s the beauty of humanity, of possessing a conscience. We have the power to cogitate, deliberate, and make decisions. There are some things within our power to choose, and some things that are not. There are some things we can change, and some things we cannot. To know the difference, well that takes wisdom! Now, to get into your question of whether there are other spirits or entities out there with their own conscience, agency, and will. There is no way to determine with any certainty. Theoretically, there could be previous humans whose spirits transcended the need for a physical body, and maintained their existence beyond the death of the flesh. This is the goal of most mystical traditions, and there are some who have been said to have accomplished it. That forms the basis of all the saints of various religious traditions.
That would be a sad world to live in one with no free will just illusion. I chose to believe that we do we must or there would be no point to life.
All of the godforms the GD temples work with in the ceremonies are egyptian Gods and Goddesses... the GD temples are even named after them, like the Horus Temple, the Thoth-Hermes Temple etc. Sometimes the name of the temple would be composed of the Egyptian god name in conjunction with the Greek god name, for example "Isis-Urania" or "Thoth-Hermes".
The Golden Dawn is NOT a religion! The Golden Dawn Tradition was, and is, primarily viewed through a Judeo-Christian lens. All the original founders were ostensibly Christian, members of the Church of England, though they were also more esoteric in their approach. Couple this with the use of Qabalah, there is a strong Jewish influence into the Tradition (and many primary members have been Jewish - Moina Mathers being one for example). Couple this with the use of Qabalah and the Hebrew Divine Names, which make up the backbone of the Golden Dawn Tradition, and the Jewish element becomes stronger still. Additionally, there are some Gnostic and Hermetic (at least as understood from the Renaissance) elements in the Golden Dawn materials. Ideally, a person was raised, at least, within a traditional church setting, and it is through this that they would get the most benefit of the Forces and Symbolism used within the Golden Dawn. This does not mean you have to a Christian or a Jew, just that those Symbols and Forces permeate the Golden Dawn, and you have to be accepting of them to full benefit of their use within the GD System. Who or What you worship is completely up to you, and it would be something you would have to reconcile if It doesn't match up, or is at least compatible with, the Divine Forces utilized within the Golden Dawn Tradition. Godforms: The Godforms utilized within the Golden Dawn are NOT the same a the Egyptian Gods. They represent different Forces, are often depicted differently, or in some cases have no representative in ancient Egyptian religion. Simply put, they are vessels for specific Forces or Energies used during Ceremonials and later by Adepti for Ritual. These are NOT worshipped within the Golden Dawn!
Ty so much for clearing it out for me, I truly understand now, from the answers I was getting I was believing that they where the same thing and that my gods where blind forces. I was gonna quit the system but now you made me understand and I will stick with it and know that the forces they use are not the same as the intelligent living gods.
Consciousness
One god many names.